


rather useless

by scriptmanip



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Angie cooks, F/F, Pre-Relationship, Unresolved Sexual Tension, post season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 09:23:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5042833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scriptmanip/pseuds/scriptmanip
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy has very clearly not thought this through.</p>
            </blockquote>





	rather useless

**Author's Note:**

> Peggy has very clearly not thought this through, and neither have I. 
> 
> First fic for Cartinelli, please be kind. 
> 
> Bloody Nora, another fandom to consume me entirely. Here we go ...

Peggy returns home--and it's odd even still, calling this monstrous display of Howard Stark's infinite wealth _home_ \--worn and bedraggled, still smelling of her latest mission. The faint scents of earth and petrol that cling to her skin and hair from having evacuated the Willy MA jeep mere seconds before seeing it go up in a rather spectacular display of combustion. The fact she'd left an unconscious operative strapped in the passenger seat while she dove to safety, stolen Leviathan files strapped securely beneath her military jacket, was merely an added bonus.

She enters the foyer on threadbare energy, but her senses can't be dulled. Her career--her entire life, if she's being honest--as a soldier, a field agent, a trained spy for the United States government, mandates such precise attention to detail that it's rare she's ever able to switch off completely. She's been trained to the highest degree to detect the slightest sounds, mere fractions of movement. She's learnt to differentiate the mundane from threats of violence through her keen awareness, and so her brain is always firing these synapses even in moments of ease. Even within her own home.

The staccato clicks of Angie igniting a burner to boil water for pasta.

The whining creaks from opening the bathroom door on the second floor.

The shuffle of linens--usually cream coloured with blue and lavender flowers--as Angie wakes to start her day in the bedroom across the hall.

There aren't many moments Peggy spends in silence--always listening, watching, collecting data for any number of reasons from insipid to paramount.

She's learning though. The time she spends within these walls has begun to feel a bit quieter. A bit calmer than the constant bustle and noise of the city outside and the encroaching dangers beyond. The building has heightened security measures and countless innovations of one Howard Stark that have been implemented to ensure added protections, some of which the American government isn't even privy. Howard may be a philandering wanker, but he's an indisputable genius despite his predilections for floozies and one-night stands. One could presume Peggy's calmer demeanor is credit to these security measures, to the building being protected like Her Majesty's chambers.

And one would be sorely mistaken.

She hears Angie's voice coming from behind the closed door of the first floor study, it's lilt distinct and warm. And Peggy smiles at the muted sound of it. Angie is running lines no doubt, and Peggy won't disturb her despite the urge that instantly swells in her chest to hear that voice closer and louder and full of life. To look into the face that goes along with it. Peggy has been gone for just over three days, but she doesn't hesitate to admit: she's missed Angie. Peggy pauses, nearly reaching out to place a hand on the door of the study but stops just shy of being ridiculous and soppy about her housemate. She'll see Angie for dinner, and that will be just fine.

Until--

The man's voice that follows Angie's is unfamiliar, and Peggy freezes just one pace away from the door. Truthfully if it doesn't belong to Mr. Jarvis or Howard himself, any man's voice in the house would be an unfamiliar one. The man's voice raises to a startling volume and though the greater, rational part of Peggy's brain knows this is most likely a scripted outrage, her instincts force her into action, intent on protecting Angie at all costs.

Humiliation then, notwithstanding.

The door swings open to reveal Angie pressed up against a wall of shelving, housing books that Peggy is certain Howard has never read. Angie's costar, or potential assailant is how Peggy will later spin this to convince herself an intrusion was absolutely necessary, has each of his filthy paws around Angie's slender wrists and his mouth is now latched hungrily to the side of Angie's neck.

Instantly, Peggy wants to both shrink back into the dim hallway and lunge forward to break the man's fingers in at least 15 places. Scripted or not, it's an intimate position to see Angie in, and Peggy rather wishes she could learn to control her impulses when it comes to saving the bloody day.

She's less clear about her desire to injure and maim a harmless thespian (obvious now that Angie is not in danger by the way she laughs brightly when spotting Peggy at the door), and locks it away with every other urge she has around Angie Martinelli as of late, each one desperately confusing.

"Peg, you're back!"

"Yes, I was only just--" Peggy stutters towards an explanation, feeling a flush crawl up her neck.

But Angie saves Peggy from herself as she so often does. "You just get in? You look like you been dragged behind a garbage truck right through the dodgy end of Chinatown." Angie bobs her head adorably to indicate the man standing to her left. "This is Walt. We've been cast in some terrible rendition of Dracula, and it's all really awful dialogue, isn't it, Wally? Anyway, he gets to play a vampire which is neat, I guess, making me the damsel falling prey to his deadly charms."

Angie has barely taken a breath, and Peggy only slightly recovers from the embarrassment of intruding on their rehearsal as well as speaking clumsily and not at all like an agent trained in interrogation and sewing lies rightly should.

"Oh, yes hello. Walter was it?" Peggy shakes her head and extends her right hand which she's been wringing with her left.

"Yeah, pleased to meet ya," Walt smiles.

Peggy closes her hand around his, and fights for the quickest second not to tighten her grip around the fingers that had so recently manhandled Angie. Just a hairline fracture to the index finger would send the message, Peggy thinks.

"I should get going, Ang. Trains are running shorter schedules today because they're working on the Flushing Line, and I gotta get back to Queens before dinner or Eddie'll have my head."

Angie slaps Walt on the back good-naturedly, like a teammate of sorts, and rewards him with a smile that's not quite a smirk.

"Can't be having any lovers' squabbles before opening night, can we, Wally?"

Peggy's eyes narrow, trying to follow Angie's meaning while Walt goes pale and then pink and then laughs uncomfortably until Angie sets things right.

"Don't worry about English here. She keeps secrets better than a damn spy. Anyway, thanks for coming by."

Walt seems to feel better then, relaxing with an audible sigh, while Peggy very nearly topples over from Angie's cavalier reference to her actual work in the presence of a civilian.

"I'll see you at rehearsals tomorrow," Walt says to Angie and then offers Peggy a stilted wave before showing himself out.

Peggy's intention is to first admonish Angie, at the very least, and then reiterate for what feels like the hundredth time that she really must not merrily discuss the ongoings of Peggy's work with any old Tom. Whether in jest or not.

The words die in her throat, of course, with Angie's arms suddenly wrapped around it, her head of bouncing curls pressed against Peggy's cheek and their bodies very nearly flush together.

"I'm happy you're home, Peg," Angie says, her voice somewhat trapped in the crook of Peggy's shoulder.

Peggy starts to respond, and stops, and starts again when her arms find their way around Angie's waist.

"I'm happy to be home too," she manages to say. And it feels like she's been carrying around some heavy, leaden parcel for three days straight only to have finally been able to unload it now.

She almost sighs for how content and unburdened she suddenly feels. It's yet another confusing sentiment she'll need to stow away with the rest. And it's getting quite crowded in the place where she keeps them, Peggy hates to admit.

"I'm gonna go start dinner while you clean up," Angie tells her after pulling out of their embrace. "I really am happy you're here, but man, you stink."

Angie waves a hand in front of her nose which has scrunched for effect, and a laugh tumbles out of Peggy and fills up the small space of the study.

"I'll just be a moment then," Peggy answers, and Angie leaves her with a quick squeeze of her hand, which Peggy only just realises she'd been holding.

**

Peggy meticulously scrubs at her hands in the shower, a spray of water as hot as she can stand cascading onto her and filling the bathroom with pleasant clouds of steam. She's sustained only a few minor gashes to her upper arms, nothing time won't heal. It's a welcome reprieve from her last mission, from which two broken ribs are still mending. Her mind drifts to Angie, to their friendship, to their living arrangements both past and present. She'd asked Angie to come with her to Howard's without a second thought. Without any thought at all, if she's being honest. She couldn't very well leave Angie at The Griffith. She couldn't put her at risk of being harmed or targeted by Dottie, who still loomed at large.

But it wasn't just Angie's safety on which Peggy mused. It never did stop there.

Peggy thinks about Angie's eyes--about their colour and sheen, the tricks they play on Peggy's central nervous system when Peggy forgets herself and looks into them for too long. She thinks about the scent of Angie's hair, its soft curls that so easily might slip through Peggy's fingers if she let herself go that one step further during an embrace. If she could only reach up and thread her fingers through it while Angie's head rests against her shoulder as it so often has.

"Schoolgirl nonsense," Peggy whispers to herself, one freshly scrubbed hand resting on the white tiled wall of the shower, the other covering her eyes.

It won't do to stay hidden away in the shower, and if nothing else Peggy is starving and Angie's cooking is delicious. They will sit down to dinner, perhaps sharing something out of Howard's generously stocked wine cellar, and it will be just fine.

Except Angie is singing some terribly enchanting tune as she sets the dining table, and Peggy admits quite readily that all is not just fine. Not the way her hands perspire with an ache to touch Angie's face. Not the wrenching in her gut that screams: _you can't run away from this_. Not the way Angie turns towards her and gives her a smile that lights up the room. It lights up the entire bloody city of New York.

Peggy has very clearly not thought this through.

Impetuous as ever, she has not only befriended but now--by her own doing!--keeps a woman as her housemate whom she very much fancies being more than her friend. Peggy, for all her training and reform, for all her grace under pressure, suddenly feels rather useless in Angie's presence.

No, she's not thought this through at all.

"What are you doing hovering in the doorway? This pasta's not gonna serve itself," Angie chides mildly, setting down a large platter of steaming food.

Peggy steels herself for the worst, as if Angie could be any more lovely than she already is, and enters the room. 

Conversation flits between Peggy's time away, though the details she can legally share are scant, and Angie's new production, which despite Angie loathing she talks of incessantly. And Peggy is so very helplessly charmed by Angie's ramblings, she reaches for another piece of bread with a sigh of resignation.

Around her fourth helping of bread, Peggy finally works out the question that's been itching at the back of her throat for hours.

"Your friend Walter seemed to be enjoying your company. Do you suppose he fancies being more than your leading man onstage?" 

Angie very nearly chokes up the sip of wine she's just taken, tears of laughter almost immediately springing to her eyes. 

"You know, for a super-agent gumshoe, English, you can be a real knucklehead sometimes."

"How do you--"

"Let's just say, Wally isn't hoping to get a look at my unmentionables any time soon." Angie swirls the final sip of wine in her glass, eyeing it sceptically for a few beats. "If I were were a less understanding sort of person, like my Uncle Sal maybe, Wally and Eddie would be nothing more than a couple'a flits. But, it's the theater, ya know? It's New York and the war is over, and I don't know if it's right or wrong, but maybe we should all just love who we wanna love." 

Peggy swallows the knot that's formed in her throat, and fails miserably at concealing much of what she's feeling because Angie is watching her and despite her best efforts Peggy cannot look away. At Angie's small shrug--just the slightest lift of her left shoulder--and muted smile, the horrific fear coursing through Peggy is quelled, and she breathes out a smile of her own. 

"I think it's quite lucky that _Wally_ ," Peggy says with a rueful tone, "has a friend like you." She extends her wine glass towards Angie's, prompting the clink of their glasses that follows. "As am I." 

It's not an admission. Not quite. Not at all really, but it is something, Peggy hopes. 

"I think that's the manicotti talking more than anything, English," Angie deflects with a laugh. "But, thanks." 

**

While finishing the washing up, Peggy at the sink and Angie drying and putting away, Peggy is inclined to draw the conversation back to the rehearsal she had shamelessly intruded upon. 

"Angie, you do know that I'm more than happy to run lines with you should you ever be in need of a partner. I thought my interpretation of the mystical Jewish seamstress from your last production was quite good."

Angie laughs while bumping her hip into Peggy's own. "Oh no, you've missed your calling in the limelight hands down, but you're not exactly a dependable actress, you know? Dropping out of airplanes into God knows where and wrestling Russians like you do."

Peggy deflates. Angie is deflecting casually but it's not hard to detect the concern in her voice. Maintaining a friendship with someone like Peggy isn't easy, and she knows it must wear on Angie the way she comes and goes without notice. The barely healed wounds and fading bruises Angie pretends not to notice.

"I'm sorry I'm not around with much consistency. I wish I could--" Peggy starts but the words that follow sound like things she can't say: I wish I could stay forever. I wish I could wake beside you every morning. I wish I could tell you how I feel. "I'm afraid I'm not a terribly reliable flatmate, am I?"

Angie waves it away though, turning her back on Peggy to place their bowls into a cabinet. "Don't worry about it, English. You don't have to explain. Anyway this script is full of plenty of gushing, lovey dialogue and passionate embraces where my gal wants to kiss the lips off ole Vampy when all he wants is to drink from her neck." When Angie turns back to face Peggy, she sighs with both hands on her hips. "Probably a little above your pay grade, ya know?"

Peggy desperately hopes the scenes now playing out in her traitorous head of her own lips on Angie's neck don't show across her face as a laugh stutters into the air between them, Peggy's eyes cast cowardly towards the floor.

"I think you'd be surprised at the things I'm capable of, Ms Martinelli," Peggy says. And it's only after she's dared to look up again that Angie raises her brow impressively.

"Well alright then, English. I'll grab the script, you bring the wine."

With a cheeky wink, Angie is exiting the kitchen and Peggy, dumbfounded and heart racing, runs both hands down the length of her trousers before following after.


End file.
